Archive for Listopad, 2011

IBM South Africa announced its focus on introducing Smarter Computing technologies with the initial introduction of new server and storage technologies to help clients increase IT capacity and increase storage efficiencies.

As the world’s increasing demand for data and services puts a strain on IT resources, organisations become trapped in a vicious cycle in which a rigid IT infrastructure and lack of trusted data leads to reactive or risky decision making. Attempts to overcome these challenges through additional IT investments often result in a more sprawling and costly infrastructure.

The new offerings, including a new midrange disk system with built-in storage efficiency capabilities, address these challenges with smarter computing technologies to integrate storage, optimise systems and virtualise data centers.

“The old ways of buying and managing storage have become less effective. Due to resource constraints—both physical storage resources and human resources—IT organisations must act quickly to optimise and simplify their infrastructure. Unchecked complexity and growth will only become bigger problems over time.” says Bevan Lock, Midrange Disk Storage Product Manager for IBM Systems Group in South Africa.

Small and midsize organisations typically suffer from a range of challenges including:

To stand up to these challenges and allow businesses to respond to a rapidly changing marketplace, IBM Storwize V7000 Unified is a virtualised storage system to complement virtualised server environments that provides unmatched performance, availability, advanced functions and highly scalable capacity never seen before in midrange disk systems.

Storwize V7000 Unified is a powerful midrange disk system that has been designed to be easy to use and enable rapid deployment without additional resources. Storwize V7000 Unified consolidates block and file workloads into a single storage system for simplicity of management and reduced cost.

The IBM Storwize V7000 system incorporates some of IBM’s top technology, typically found only in enterprise-class storage systems, raising the standard for storage efficiency in midrange disk systems.

The IBM Storwize V7000 system simplifies storage management with a powerful, easy-to-use interface that can help organisations improve storage performance, efficiency, and utilisation rates while improving storage administrator productivity. The IBM Storwize V7000 system includes the following features for ease of use:

The IBM Storwize V7000 system integrates top IBM storage efficiency technologies into a modular design that simplifies the addition of more storage technologies. Greater efficiency translates into reduced energy costs, reduced administrative costs and less storage sprawl. The IBM Storwize V7000 system efficiency highlights include the following:

The IBM Storwize V7000 system has a dynamic, modular, compact design that sets a new standard for cost-effective midrange disk systems. Instead of buying a whole cabinet and then filling it with disk enclosures over time, the IBM Storwize V7000 system uses individual, modular components providing organisations with reduced space requirements and more flexibility. Capacity and functionality can be added as needed, over time and with less disruption than with traditional midrange disk systems.

IBM introduced the IBM Storwize V7000 midrange storage system in October 2010 and the systems sold out in the fourth quarter, with IBM shipping more than 1,000 systems to customers. IBM announced that the Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Epidemiology at the University of Leipzig, Germany, selected the Storwize V7000 to manage the torrent of data flowing into its organisation so it can be swiftly delivered for workloads like genetic research.

The connected home is the home of the future, as video streaming, Internet television and increasing numbers of connected devices become a reality in South Africa. However, while Wi-Fi is often the most convenient method for home users to distribute connectivity through a home, there are several issues that are commonly experienced when using wireless that can prove frustrating if they are not correctly addressed.

Dead spots are a frequent issue, where certain places in homes experience very poor or no wireless reception at all. This happens for a number of reasons, mainly related to the format and layout of the home itself. Areas that are too distant from the wireless router may experience poor reception, as may areas that are located around corners and behind walls. Double story home configurations also present problems, as obtaining connectivity on both floors can prove challenging.

These configuration issues are caused by inherent limitations in wireless technology itself, in that Wi-Fi penetrates mainly horizontally instead of vertically and is usually unable to penetrate more than six bricks. Homes with concrete floors between levels will experience the problem of dead spots to a greater degree, because of the same limitations.

General interference from wiring within the house and common electrical appliances such as microwaves and other electro-magnetic devices may also cause interruptions in signal which can affect the speed and quality of wireless connectivity.

It is also useful to bear in mind that even when dead spots do not occur, the signal will become weaker the further away from the wireless router the user is. As the signal penetrates through the house, transfer speeds will drop and connectivity might become unstable.

Placing the router carefully to ensure maximum penetration and coverage is one option, but this is not always practical, since the placement of routers is often dependent on the location of the fixed line entry point into the home. Although problems are still common, even with the Wireless-N technology having greatly improved the Wi-Fi penetration distance, Wi-Fi remains the most convenient option, as it allows mobility and does not involve the huge cost associated with laying Ethernet cables throughout an existing building.

To remedy this many people turn to stronger antennae and tools such as boosters and repeaters to improve the strength of signal, but this will not always help with penetration and transfer speeds. However, solving the wireless dilemma in the home does not involve a lot of complicated equipment or huge cost. It is in fact a simple task which can be dealt with quickly, easily and cost effectively.

Ethernet over power adapters enable the user to create a broadband network using existing electrical wiring, which allows Internet access to all the rooms, since electrical wiring typically runs throughout the entire house.
Ethernet over power adaptors have several advantages, including maintaining constant speeds due to more stable connectivity and eliminating dead spots, since additional devices can be easily added wherever they are required.
This technology also eliminates the problems that occur in multi-story buildings, since the electrical wiring runs between floors.

Installation takes a matter of minutes, since the adapter simply needs to be plugged into a power outlet and connected to the master device with the push of a button, creating an instant network connection between the two. This is a far more cost effective solution than running Ethernet cables through the house, while providing the same benefits as this fixed connectivity would with all of the advantages of wireless.

Ethernet over power devices are also completely portable, requiring no fixed installation, and so can be easily removed should people wish to move homes or rooms. They also provide more functionality than a standard access point, because they allow both wired and wireless connectivity, using Wi-Fi or by plugging devices such as Internet televisions and set top boxes, that typically need a stable connection, straight into the Ethernet port on the device.

Who would have thought that your electrical wiring could provide the ideal ‘conduit’ for Ethernet networks, extending and enhancing your home network?

Harnessing the potential of your existing power lines in your home through an Ethernet over Power device is an innovative way of ensuring your network speeds are not degraded, dead zones are never a problem and connectivity is as close as your nearest wall power socket.

Binary Tree, a provider of software solutions for migrating to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint, recently announced the availability of E2E Complete which adds support for cross-forest (inter-organisation) Exchange migrations in addition to its existing capabilities for automating intra-organisation Exchange upgrades.

“E2E Complete now provides customers with a comprehensive Exchange migration solution that they can use to upgrade, consolidate, segregate, and migrate their Exchange Server environments,” states Val Vasquez, E2E Complete Product Manager for Binary Tree. “And since E2E Complete is licensed to individual mailboxes, customers can migrate these mailboxes between on-premises Exchange environments and Microsoft Office 365 as many times as they need to.”

E2E Complete is architected to use the latest Exchange Management Shell (PowerShell) commands in the background to move mailboxes at speeds an order of magnitude faster than agent-based tools and provides true bi-directional synchronisation between Active Directory (AD) environments as well as public folder migration to support legacy Exchange 2003 environments. E2E Complete provides project managers and administrators with centralised management and reporting, automated user communications, and the ability to automatically build a schedule and forecast for the project based on a small migration sample, taken continuously.

Says Chris Hathaway, Director at Soarsoft Africa and distributor of Binary Tree solutions, “This award is testimony to Binary Tree’s innovative solutions and pedigree as a dedicated migration company over the last 16 years. Our recent distribution agreement with Binary Tree means that the local market now has access to these solutions and methodologies, that have been used for the largest and most complex migrations in the world, including sites with over 200 000 users.”

You’re ready
You’ve thought long and hard about it, and you’re finally ready to adopt unified communications (UC), including its foundation, Voice over IP.

Part of the attraction is the rich application benefits of this technology, but you’re also painfully aware that its array of predecessors, including TDM (Time Division Multiplexing) switched telephony, won’t be around or dominant for that much longer.

The bottom line: whether your existing TDM PBX has broken down, doesn’t have the features you want, costs too much to maintain, or whether your business is growing and your existing technology won’t scale or isn’t worth scaling, there are numerous reasons to go UC.

But are you prepared?
Nevertheless, the migration you’re planning is a serious overhaul of your business communication systems, and some preparation is in order.

As you consider your alternatives, the following questions are pertinent:

• Which UC capabilities are most important to my business goals and stakeholders?
• Can I get mileage out of my existing equipment?
• How can I benefit from a cloud delivery model?
• What resources will be necessary to deploy and maintain the system?
• How quick is installation, and how flexible is provisioning?
• What will the cost be to acquire, implement and maintain the system over a period of five to seven years?

Mapping UC to business goals
A good UC integrator-consultant will give you the best possible advice about a solution that suits your company and your business goals.

For example, if your business places fluctuating demands on communications (seasonally or otherwise), you need ‘elastic’ infrastructure that scales up and down as needed. To accommodate the campaign/holiday call centre agents without being left over-provisioned when they’re gone again, a UC solution in the cloud could be considered.

If you have many mobile workers, the vendor with the best (most interoperable) mobility solution should get a look in. And if you have very active business partners it may be helpful to you to set up multiple ‘zero-rated’ lines to them. And so on.

Sweating assets
Consider a phased approach. Your old TDM PBX can still be used to satisfy the needs of existing office-based users. As you grow, deploy UC and test the business case before you roll it out to the entire organisation. The business benefits of UC together with the total cost of ownership should outweigh your old TDM system.

Should you go cloud or not?
A cloud service offers many theoretical advantages over physical infrastructure, including flexible provisioning, zero capital costs and predictable ongoing charges (no extra charge for updates, upgrades or maintenance).

However, in the South African market the availability and cost of bandwidth is not making cloud solutions that attractive yet. Even in the North American market, hosted voice is accepted by the sub-50 user market, but not much in medium and large organisations.

A customer premises-based UC system that is reliable, easy to manage remotely and offered on a managed services basis provides virtually the same business benefits, but with the peace of mind that the system is on-site and can fail over to TDM lines if and when required.

Deploying and maintaining the solution
If you have the IT staff, you may want to deploy and manage your own (on-site) UC solution especially if it is a system that is easy to deploy and maintain.

You may want to consider a UC system with an architecture that allows you to deploy a hybrid on site-private hosted solution. Host some appliances or servers in a data centre, either for redundancy or disaster recovery, or, if you have a large number of small offices that need to be part of the UC system, for economies of scale.

Speed of installation and flexibility of provisioning
Cloud should by rights be quicker to deploy than customer premises equipment, since it only requires deploying IP phones and client software or using a Web browser to access the full UC feature.

But in reality, connectivity to the organisation needs to be increased with cloud, and there is typically a waiting time for this. In the case of an easy-to-install on-site UC solution, the appliances will come pre-programmed by the solutions provider, and installation will consist solely of rolling out phones and hooking up the server and appliances in the customer’s server room.

Think first
It is becoming obvious to many businesses that UC is the way of the future, but a healthy amount of planning can deliver unexpected benefits and avoid lost opportunity costs.

Before you jump at any solution, do your own research. Have a look at what Gartner and other analysts have to say about the vendor. Take a careful look at the market challengers as well as some of the niche players. Also look up commentary about the vendors in the international business press.

CoZa Cares, the corporate social responsibility arm of UniForum SA, and Mindset Learn are set to distribute Grade 12 IT learning materials to more than 400 schools for the 2012 school year. This adds to the learning materials for Grades 10 and 11 the organisations delivered to some 300 schools during 2011.

The learning materials are expected to help learners at hundreds of schools to navigate the challenging and important final years of IT as a Matric subject before they embark on tertiary education and careers.

Mindset Learn is the schooling programme of Mindset Network, an NGO that develops curriculum-aligned content for learners and educators in South Africa and Africa.

The materials, developed by Mindset Learn, will be distributed for free by CoZa Cares to schools that serve thousands of pupils studying IT up to Matric level.

The Grade 12 materials comprise new content that has been aligned with the national curriculum. They offer up to 24.5 hours of content in 50 lessons, including 17 hours of computer-based, interactive multimedia lessons and 7.5 hours of video lessons.

Said CoZa Cares Manager, Fiona Wallace: “UniForum understands the importance of improving technology literacy and building the country’s base of IT skills for the future. We are delighted to work with an organisation that is striving to do exactly this in the form of Mindset Learn.”

Dylan Busa, schooling executive at Mindset Network said that the Grades 10 and 11 materials have proven to be a massive success. Now, with the Grade 12 materials, Mindset and CoZa Cares will deliver quality support for learners in the important subject of IT right up to Matric level.

“The success of the programme to date has come from the innovative technology we have developed and our focus on the curriculum, paired with support from sponsors such as CoZa Cares,” he added. “We look forward to extending the reach of this programme even further during 2012.”

UniForum SA is the organisation that maintains the .co.za domain registry and has made extensive investments in ICT skills development in South Africa. CoZa Cares has been a significant conduit for its social investment since 2001.

UniForum SA has long served as the largest supporter of the Internet Service Providers’ Association of SA’s (ISPA’s) “Train the Teacher” project over the past decade.

Spark ATM Systems, South Africa’s premier independent Automated Teller Machine (ATM) deployer, has received the award for Excellence in the Management of Technology – Established Enterprises at the recent Technology Top 100 Awards in recognition of its success in the development and use of technology, innovation and people.

Marc Sternberg, Managing Director of Spark ATM Systems, says he is incredibly proud to be recognised by the Technology Top 100 Awards for a second consecutive year. “We feel that this latest achievement is testament to how we are utilising technology as a tool to drive efficiency in our business.”

Spark ATM Systems, which was founded in 2005, is a national organisation with sales and technical capabilities across South Africa and provides secure, accessible and convenient cash withdrawal solutions to consumers in convenient retail and hospitality locations.

Sternberg says all technology is developed by the company’s in-house research and development team including, among others, transaction processing systems, ATM software, monitoring and administrative systems and Customer Relationship Management systems. “This ensures that we consistently remain at the forefront of local and international ATM technological innovation.”

The awards – which have evolved over 18 years – recognise true South African role models and mentors, who are either users or developers of technology, and who, through innovation, have been able to take their organisations to new levels of competitiveness. Award-winners must also demonstrate how they have created a link between technology, innovation and people to ensure strategic business objectives are met.

“This award reaffirms that our entire staff complement works together as a cohesive unit, constantly striving to be the market leader in innovation and ensuring that both clients and consumers benefit from our innovative services and solutions,” concludes Sternberg.

Stratus, a new cloud-based “fax as a service” solution from Vox Amvia, will offer the powerful document management features of enterprise fax servers to small and medium-sized enterprises for the first time.

“Rumours of the death of fax are greatly exaggerated,” says Craig Freer of Vox Amvia, the enterprise fax specialist in the Vox Telecom group. “Fax is still a critical tool for many businesses because it delivers security, auditing and tracking that email can’t match. That’s why documents like purchase orders, invoices, loan applications and the like are still routinely transmitted by fax.”

But until now, says Freer, only medium to large corporates have been able to afford the fax server technology that makes it easy to manage large numbers of faxes. “Distributing, securing, storing and archiving paper faxes has always been a nightmare, which is why fax server technology has been so widely adopted,” he says.

In addition, a fax server makes it possible to intelligently route faxes directly to the correct person or business application, even if the company is only using one fax number “This allows companies to significantly streamline business processes and improve customer satisfaction levels,” says Freer.

The advent of cloud computing and hosted services, adds Freer, has democratised fax server technology. “Hosting enables us to offer Stratus to everyone from the home office market to mid-sized enterprises. That’s on top of all the other benefits of hosted technology: There is no upfront capital investment and people pay only for what they use. You also always have the most up-to-date version of the software available – there’s never any need to download and install updates or patches.”

Stratus can make the process of sending and receiving faxes truly paperless, says Freer, enabling faxes to be delivered to any email address or network folder in the organisation. “It’s a particularly good solution for companies that demand stringent audit trails on document movement, want to consolidate fax numbers for each business unit, access content of fax images , or automate faxing to and from business applications.”

Even more importantly, he says, it enables fax to become part of the enterprise-wide document management process – including being stored in searchable form in an archive. “It makes finding an old fax as easy as finding an old email, using any search engine.”

“All of this means Stratus is a lot more than a simple fax-to-email service,” says Freer. “It can take days off business processes and dramatically reduce administration costs.”

Vox Amvia is the sole South African agent for RightFax, the world’s leading fax server vendor. “With Stratus we’re able to enable even small businesses to route, store, search and archive their faxes without ever having to print or capture data.”

Global construction, machinery, mining and equipment manufacturer, Komatsu Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd has signed a multi-million rand deal to migrate its SAP environment to T-Systems private hosted cloud computing service in South Africa.

The migration to T-Systems’ cloud offering will see Komatsu benefit from an improved service across a virtualised and standardised platform that scales to meet the company’s ICT needs in a flexible, pay-per-use environment.

Additionally, the company will benefit from a hosted service that meets the highest global standards for availability and backup, disaster recovery and security. Importantly, the move mitigates the under-utilisation of assets.

Headquartered in Isando, Johannesburg Komatsu has for the last five years used T-Systems as an outsourced hosting partner for its enterprise-wide SAP environment. Moving to the cloud was therefore a natural evolution of the companies’ relationship, underpinned by T-Systems’ globally-recognised cloud computing expertise.

Comments Mike Blom, Managing Director of Komatsu Southern Africa: “Over the years our relationship had gone from strength-to-strength. Our next step was to obtain an even higher level of service but at a lower cost. This was a key decision factor for us.

“T-Systems’ cloud computing service met this requirement, enabling us to improve on efficiencies, service levels – all at lower cost. It is undoubtedly a good model; ultimately, IT spend will improve the way we manage our business.”

Explaining the rationale behind migrating Komatsu to the cloud, Len de Goede, Vice President Systems Integration, T-Systems in South Africa. says it was always apparent from the start and particularly in the last two years that Komatsu’s data and overall business growth would see the company spending additional money on storage.

“The timing for this project is therefore good as it provides a flexible option that supports the growth strategy of Komatsu.”

Komatsu’s migration to T-Systems’ private hosted cloud offering is testament to the strength of the companies’ five-year relationship. “As partners we grew together, however, it was particularly T-Systems’ ICT expertise and service offering that enabled us to evolve towards a mature technology infrastructure,” says Blom.

“Our partnership has come to the point where we are not only buying a product from T-Systems but also building on our mutually beneficial relationship. We stand to benefit significantly from a cost, efficiencies and service perspective.”

Adds de Goede: “The strength of our business case also clearly demonstrated to Komatsu what they stood to gain by migrating to the cloud. It made business and financial sense to both us and them.”

The actual migration to the cloud is also simplified as Komatsu does not run multiple business applications. The majority of the company’s business process transactions are run on SAP that in turn simplifies the integration process with T-Systems cloud offering.

The project will commence immediately with a planning phase estimated to take one month followed by the implementation phase which will take three months to complete. Thereafter additional services will be added when required, through the highly scalable and standardised nature of the cloud computing offering. It is anticipated that the migration will be completed quickly as the entire cloud offering is based on a standardised platform.

LaserCom and InfoSlips, South Africa’s leading companies in their respective industries have partnered on communicating with their customers.

LaserCom generates more than 30 million personalised customer communication messages a year. InfoSlips generates millions of its award-winning digital InfoSlips – this makes the partnership a logical and profitable one, with bidirectional revenue exceeding R3 million in the first year of joint trading.

“Between us we reach customers through all channels,” says Alan Burger, MD of InfoSlips. “Our company does not worry about which channels are used to reach recipients: e-mail, mobile or online – and LaserCom does the print side of the communication. In both cases it means that customers only have to deal with one interface.”

LaserCom and InfoSlips cover most of the market, and a big part of their success has been their ability to give innovative solutions within specific verticals. These verticals include financial services, benefits administration, human resources, stock broking, telecoms, insurance and the investment industry. Types of documents delivered include cellular statements, benefit statements, daily trade notes and payslips, to physical transactional documents, such as tax invoices, statements and reminders, to promotional documents.

InfoSlips takes full control for every aspect of the electronic side of the partnership, managing creative, design, compositing, selection and execution.

“LaserCom is the fulfilment partner of choice for many leading corporate enterprises,” says Konni Hoferichter, MD of LaserCom, a company in Bytes Document Solutions, wholly owned by JSE-listed Altron. “This partnership has already delivered rich value to our mutual customer sets and we only see this accelerating.”

Since 2005 InfoSlips has become the de facto standard for providing superior corporate document solutions. InfoSlips are delivered in a secure, interactive and visually rich format.

Samsung today announced the opening of yet another exciting brand store in Clearwater Mall, Roodepoort. This store will house the full range of Samsung products including; Visual Display, IT Solutions, Digital Imaging, Digital Appliances, Mobile Communications and Digital Air solutions – providing the consumer with a stimulating environment in which to discover the full spectrum of Samsung’s world-class offerings in one easily-accessible location.

Says Deon Liebenberg, MD of Samsung South Africa; “Clearwater Mall is the perfect location for a brand store of this nature where not only does the mall align to our brand objectives and image, but so to is the consumer demand for high-end technology large. As a result, through this store Samsung are able to meet this demand through making consumer-centric solutions easily accessible for the people of Johannesburg. This store will see not only our full range of products from cameras to fridges but will enable the consumer to engage with these products – in making informed purchase decisions.”

The Clearwater Mall brand store is the very 1st brand store in Johannesburg, aimed at providing consumers with the ability to purchase any of Samsung’s world class product offerings with the advice and expertise of sales staff that understand the brand and consumer specific needs. Similarly, this store is Samsung’s 6th brand store in South Africa – after I’Langa Mall in Nelspruit which opened only a month ago and is approximately 300sqm.

Concludes Liebenberg; ”As we promised, this store is just another step in our bigger objective to open a number of brand stores within South Africa and certainly is a great achievement for us as a brand – demonstrating our expansion into key market segments and our ability to provide the Johannesburg consumers with a large variety of smarter products.”